Step One To Successfully Gain Respect

Late again to another meeting? but it's okay everyone is. What about when everyone else is late to a meeting you setup, right? What is 5 or 10 minutes between colleagues and customers. That person that is always on time is just not busy enough, they look silly. Look at the rest of us, we are all 5 minutes late, they should work harder.

The respect of time and commitment seems to have disappeared in our new technology-based connections, you never switch off but why should that mean that we continue to leech on each other’s time. Let me take you through a scenario, you are 37 years old, with young children at home and a spouse you use to make time to spend with only them. Your spouse is upset again, they waited for you to have dinner together. Why can they not understand you work so hard and have back to back meetings all day and being an hour or two late every night is not even a big deal. Until your child starts to model your behaviour. Why is this kid taking so long to get up in the morning, don’t they understand I am late, why are they on their phone while I am home, don’t they understand this is the time we are to spend together?

Or perhaps further down the track, why do my kids not visit me in the nursing home, I am so glad Lindsay called me this Friday. They said they were sorry but it was just so busy at work all month, this is the first break they had to call.

So that was a bit extreme, all I did was be late 5 minutes. But did you notice the call didn’t start immediately, or it took a while for that customer to warm up to your pitch. You are starting yourself on the back foot, you have already lost some respect, and most of it is subconscious the trust is built based on an old fashion notion, you make an appointment at 3pm your word was your bond, and you broke it, over 5 minutes. Be honest, schedule your meeting at 3.10pm give yourself time between meetings, the honesty will be welcomed I am sure. Arrive 5 minutes early, have your presentation, pitch or spend a minute or two in the restroom to set yourself up for success.

Respect is an interesting topic and one that is quite tied to our emotions, if you can earn it, you can lose it. Imagine a child’s sand bucket, they want to build their castle and they are running with their wet sand back to the foundation spot they chose, but the more you let people down the more holes in the bucket and sand keeps leaking out before they get to their castle foundation. Sure, you can keep picking up more sand, but until you gain the respect and close those holes it will all just feel like a lot of work.

For 5 minutes or 10 minutes I know what I choose.

#leadership #success #respect #worklifebalance